Embrace life: Dad's advice after Hawaiian missile hell

A HINTERLAND health retreat and rehab facility operator is urging people to embrace life after being caught up in the harrowing Hawaiian fake missile threat.

Francis McLachlan, his wife Carol and their 18-year-old son were in Waikiki Beach on the morning the message arrived telling them their fates were sealed.

Mr McLachlan said it was just after 8am on January 13 at the picturesque destination when his wife's phone beeped with an amber alert giving emergency advice that a ballistic missile strike was imminent.

A few moments later the hotel screens read that a missile impact was just minutes away and that it was "not a drill”.

"We go to a ground level part of a beachfront hotel and find a stairwell below ground, waiting for a ballistic missile to strike,” Mr McLachlan recalled.

"We go to eat and there are no people, no guests, no staff. The staff have gone home to be with their families, to be with them as a family as an imminent missile alert was current, not a drill,” he said.

"To everyone in Honolulu, that warning, ballistic missile, they believed they would die.”

The owner of The Health Retreat at Maleny urged everyone to "enjoy life”, to sort out depression, anxiety and self-medication issues and embrace life every day.

This smartphone screen capture shows the retraction of a false incoming ballistic missile emergency alert sent from the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency system on Saturday, Jan. 13, 2018. Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz says the false alarm about a missile threat was based on "human error" and was "totally inexcusable." (AP Photo/Caleb Jones)Caleb Jones

"We as a family live in a scary world, what time we have let's make it special for ourselves and our family,” he said.

Mr McLachlan had been in Hawaii on a break in between meeting with a group of Canadians exploring options to open another health retreat in Canada to combat the rise of Fentanyl, which he said was cheaper and more powerful than heroin and killing "thousands per year” in Canada and the US.